six times me by Clara Herner. First place winning painting in the 2018 Beacon Celebration of the Arts competition.

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The winners of the Painting and Drawing division of the Beacon’s Celebration of the Arts competition prove the adage “it’s never too late.” Three winners and 12 honorable mentions were selected from among 418 entries in the competition.

Most of these talented painters had long, fulfilling careers in other fields. Only after retirement did our top winners take up the art form as a pleasurable pursuit. For them, winning awards is just the icing on the cake.

First Place
Clara Herner, Silver Spring, Md.

Clara Herner is 86 and the mother of three “wonderful” children and six grandchildren, who now call her Grandma Moses.

For the last two years, Herner has taken art classes from Steve Hanks at the Holiday Park Senior Center. Her winning piece was created for a class project.

“I always wanted to try my hand at art, but waited until I retired,” said Herner, who grew up in North Carolina, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and went to graduate school at Florida State University, where she met her husband.

During her professional life, she worked as a social worker, pre-school director for the Montgomery County Chapter of the YWCA, and internal auditor for Montgomery College for 22 years.

Herner, an avid gardener, enjoys painting flowers and landscapes, and uses her kitchen table as her studio. She is partial to watercolors. “I love the freedom to see how the paint can change by using various techniques, and the way the water moves with color.”

But for her winning piece, she utilized materials and an approach that was entirely new to her. She etched several different photographs of her face into linoleum blocks and printed images from these using different colors of acrylic paint.

She then glued the images to a board “and pulled the whole picture together with acrylic paint.” It took her about six weeks of class time.

Herner loves learning new techniques. “I want to explore as many different methods as I can,” she said. She’s taking drawing classes this summer and is working with pastels for the first time, and has been teaching herself encaustic painting (also called hot wax painting) through online videos.

When she’s not painting, Herner loves to read, sing in her church choir, swim, attend Bible study and concerts, and get together with friends for lunch and conversation.

When Holiday Park art classes resume in the fall, Herner will be back in school. “I don’t know enough about art. I’ve just started learning,” she said.

Second Place
Cecilia Capestany, Alexandria, Va.

Although Cecilia Capestany, 64, attended painting classes when she was a youngster, and took a number of art history classes in college, she ultimately decided to pursue graduate studies in literature and foreign languages. She then went on to enjoy a long career in international affairs.

It was only after she retired from the federal government in 2015 that she thought again about the possibility of painting. “I found in the Art League of Alexandria a number of excellent instructors, and decided to take my chances with watercolor as an intellectual challenge,” she said.

Capestany’s artwork is inspired primarily by the natural world. “The land, wildlife and objects that surround me at home, or that I come across in my travels, are a source of joy and curiosity,” she said.

Like Clara Herner, Capestany is partial to watercoloring, which she calls the “most spontaneous medium.” It allows her to paint everyday scenes in a dreamy way if she chooses, but also to “capture the texture and patterns found in nature in a realistic and deliberate way.”

Capestany is a member of the Potomac Valley Watercolorists Society, a juried organization of watercolor painters, and has exhibited at various venues. She is also a member of the Art League Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, where she shows her work, and where she recently received an “Honorable Mention” for her miniature painting, “Squirrel Study.”

Third Place
Nathalie Pouliquen, Bethesda, Md.

Nathalie Pouliquen, the third place winner in Painting and Drawing, was also the first place winner in the Sculpture/Jewelry/Pottery/Mixed Media division. You can read about her in our article about that division’s winners, “Multi-dimensional artists show their skill”.

Honorable mentions

Works from the following artists were awarded honorable mention:

John Anderson, Beltsville, Md.
Brenda Claiborne, Fort Washington, Md.
Virginia Gordon, Cockeysville, Md.
Roselyn Harding, Baltimore, Md.
Benjamin A. Jackson, Silver Spring, Md.
Karla Kombrink, Alexandria, Va.
Loretta Lechlider, Silver Spring, Md.
Mary Jane McKee, Potomac, Md.
Perry Dale Skaggs, Mechanicsville, Va.
Diana Ulanowicz, Elliott City, Md.
Steven Marshall Waugh, Fallston, Md.
Martha Weiss, Washington, D.C.